


Teach Me

by fancyquills



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Eyesight struggles, F/M, Fluff, Pre-Slash, alas they plague us all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-27
Updated: 2015-02-27
Packaged: 2018-03-15 10:49:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3444332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fancyquills/pseuds/fancyquills
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Weilew can't read. She thought Solas knew that.</p>
<p>Spoiler: he didn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Teach Me

Solas could no longer quite recall the colour of her gown. The night sky beyond his balcony door, lit by the horizon in the final throes of sunset, was of a colour to it more than the paints on his palette, but he mixed them anyway. One drop at a time, black plaster into a swirl of blues and purples, waiting for the hue in his paints to spark his memory. It was a waste of plaster, he knew. She would never take shape beyond a smear on his palette, the bristles of his brush slicked into an imitation of a dress. It would be cruel even for him to give her back her colour here. There was no sunset in the Fade.

Footsteps in the corridor stirred him from his guilt. Behind him, the doorknob scraped in its socket as it was turned, but the creak of the hinges didn’t follow. Solas turned to look at his door; someone was without, the breaks in the light filtering under the door were evidence enough of that, but whoever it was seemed content to stay there.

He waited. The shadows of his visitor’s feet shifted back and forth along the bottom of the jamb, a voice murmured from between the planks, words unintelligible but familiar in timbre, and Solas knew then who it was. He smiled.

The door opened, as he knew it would, and Weilew stood in the threshold, looking determinedly composed. Her composure lasted only as long as it took him to set down his palette before giving way to a nervous tilting to her mouth and widening of her eyes. That he could read her so easily now was not lost on him, but he refused to look closer at those implications. He couldn’t afford to.

Weilew fidgeted. “I… didn’t knock, did I,” she said. “Sorry.”

“You didn’t,” Solas said. “And were it anyone else, I would mind, but you are always welcome here, lethallan.”

She smiled at him, her nose crinkling as it always did when her smile was genuine, and Solas smiled back, helpless to do otherwise.

“In that case,” she said, abandoning her imposed vigil in the doorway and stepping fully into the room. Once inside, her nerves returned by degrees until her fidgeting was back full force, the confidence his welcome had given her crumbling away with the twists of her fingers. “I have a favour to ask.”

She was conflicted, that much was obvious, and a tendril of worry curled low in his gut. He'd never known Weilew to be open about an unsettled personal affair; she was usually solitary in her distress until whatever it was no longer distressed her. Only then would she freely disclose it. That her disquiet persisted meant whatever the matter was, it involved more than just her. That she was  _here_ meant that whatever the matter was, it most likely involved _him_. His worry grew.

_What had she figured out?_

“Of course,” he said with a calm he didn’t feel. “What can I do for you?”

She breathed in, opened her mouth to speak, and Solas braced himself, picturing a thousand words she could say, hundreds of questions that would lay his secret bare, before…

“Could… uh, could you… teach me to read?”

That…

_What?_

Solas stared at her, lips parting on a surprised puff of air. Teach her to read?  _Did she not…?_

Weilew stared back, earnest and vulnerable, but then her lips pressed together at his continued disbelieving silence and her eyes tightened with hurt. She turned for the door. “It was a silly request, forget I asked.”

He stepped forward and caught her hand. “Wait.” He could feel the tendons of her wrist beneath his thumb, brought into sharp relief by the clench of her fist. The tips of her ears burned in the candlelight. “I am sorry, lethallan, I wasn’t expecting… I had no idea you couldn’t —” She flinched, a minute dip of her head that spoke volumes of her shame, and his words stopped fast in his throat.

She thought he knew.

_He should have._

Scouting reports, always summarised by the messenger, tucked away unopened. Missives at the war table always clarified by her advisors at her request, citing her unfamiliarity with human politics with a self-deprecating smile. The tremor of relief in her hands when Leliana complied with a reassuring smile — a  _knowing_  smile — in return. The early mornings she’d spend in his rotunda, perched on his table and peppering him with questions as he mixed his paints, questions easily answered by the books she shared the table with. Solas had told her as much and had given her permission to read them with an indulgent smile. She had gone quiet, and had looked down at the volume by her hip, her face overcome with a devastated wistfulness as she touched the embossed lettering on its spine. She had turned back to him with a tremulous smirk and told him that she knew that, she just liked his voice better. At the time he’d been gratified, flattered, and he ached in retrospect at his own thoughtlessness. The ache grew sharper at the defeat he could see in the slope of her shoulders now.

“Lethallan,” he said quietly. She didn’t move. “ _Weilew_.”

All at once, then tension left her and she sighed, long and shaking. She fidgeted a moment with the hem of her tunic, then waved her free hand listlessly in front of her face. “Bad eyes, you know. Can’t see big things up close all that well, never mind little letters.” She turned back to the table, though her face remained averted, cheeks now pinked to match her ears.

He soothed a path through the freckles on her wrist with the pad of his thumb and she stepped closer to ease the pull he had on her arm, her hand relaxing completely against his fingers. “Has no one tried to teach you before?”

She shook her head. “No one has had the time.” She turned her her hand in his without breaking his grip and pressed the pads of her fingers to the heel of his palm. “Or the patience,” she added, soft and sad.

His decision was made the moment she asked him, but the quiet heartbreak in her admission steeled him all the more. He stepped closer to take both her hands in his, squeezing them gently in silent request for her attention, which she gave after a moment. She met his gaze and held it, the gold of her eyes turned almost bronze in the half light of his candles. To him, they were beautiful. To her, he now realised, they were her greatest failure. That just wouldn’t do.

“I would be glad to teach you.”

The joy that blossomed on Weilew’s face was a greater temptation to him than any spirit in the Fade.


End file.
